The Plant of My Life

Lord Krishna starts Chapter 15 of Bhagwat Geeta with the Verse,

“Urdhva-mulam adhah-sakham

asvattham prahur avyayam

chandāmsi yasya parnani

yas tam veda sa veda-vit”

English Translation: There is a banyan tree which has its roots upward and its branches down and whose leaves are the Vedic hymns. One who knows this tree is the knower of the Vedas.

I draw partial analogy and partial inspiration from this sloka and look at evolution of my life in presence of Swamiji.

Swamiji has blessed us over the last decade with his wisdom, factual analysis of life, the science behind evolution of consciousness and most importantly his energy. The energy has dissipated in various forms using material mediums like books, blogs, videos etc. and of course via his blessings

If I were to simply metaphorize how Swamiji has inspired and influenced lives of many of his bhaktas (including myself) then the below two figures are perhaps a good representation of it.

In the first figure I have represented the plant of my life. I have sown the seed of my devotion in Shri Hari’s universe where the soil is essentially my bond of belief with Swamiji. This had begun after reading through Swamiji’s memoir If Truth be Told. (I will elaborate in my next article on role of each book in detail).

Figure 1: The Plant of my Life

I have watered this seed with weekly blogs and videos which are drops of wisdom, each drop being true subset of the ocean of knowledge that Swamiji has access to. In presence of swamiji’s Grace (The Sun) the seed of my faith has started to evolve. The faith has increased day by day and grown into a small plant with stem and branches representing irreversible faith (Read “The Book of Faith” to know what “Faith” is). These branches now help to sprout out the leaves of Kindness (Read The Book of Kindness to know how to be more Kind).

The eventual aim is to make oneself (this body-mind complex) capable enough to produce the flowers of compassion. And these flowers do not blossom easily. They are built on foundation of four (key) attributes which define us in all 3 planes of existence. The four attributes are the four petals of the flower of compassion.

Figure 2: The Nectar of Compassion

Figure 2 talks about how these four petals represent the four attributes of a jiva i.e. Physical, mental, emotional and consciousness.  Swamiji has made available plethora of knowledge that is required for us to understand and master these four attributes. The more we inculcate teachings from these books the more beautiful will be the flower. Eventually the ultimate goal is to enable the nectar to be formed at the center of our heart so that the creator, almighty Shri Hari dwells every moment around it. (Very similar to the esoteric meaning of Srisailam Bhramarambika, mother goddess in the form of a honey bee!).

So similar to as mentioned in the Sloka at the start of this article, one who knows the plant of his/her life and what it takes to enable the formation of nectar (of compassion), will surely discover that Shri Hari (the root cause of this existence) dwells around him like a honey-bee does around the flowers filled with nectar.

Jai Shri Hari!